


Focolare

by Jana_C



Category: Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Cute in a disturbing way, M/M, Winteriron Reverse Bang 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 19:42:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16332236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jana_C/pseuds/Jana_C
Summary: Their money always had blood on it, no matter where it came from.And Tony always felt as if he could never really wash it all away.





	Focolare

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the WinterIron Reverse Bang 2018 from Tumblr! I was lucky enough to get the amazing [Ez (here's a link for her art blog!)](https://ezdoodlesstuff.tumblr.com/) for the art that inspired this fic, which you can see [here](https://ibreathebooks-42.tumblr.com/post/179148032556/ezdoodlesstuff-mafiaau-for-the-winteriron)! Thank you so much for the work!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy this, despite it being much shorter than what I usually go for.

Tony didn’t like to think he had gotten too many things from his father, but he had learned, still very young, that money is dirty.

His father would work in cars to distract himself, covered in oil and sooth, and not even wash up for dinner, to the chagrin of his mother, who liked her house prim and proper — but whenever Howard touched cash, he would carefully wash his hands, dry them quietly, and stare at them for a long moment before continuing with his day.

“Money is a dirty thing, kid,” he father would tell him, with a dry, bitter chuckle, in one of the few pieces of advice that wasn’t immediately followed by reprimands for him to  be better .

As he grew older, he understood his father meant that  their money was dirty — or at least dirtier than most other people’s.

Their money always had blood on it, no matter where it came from.

And Tony always felt as if he could never really wash it all away.

X

When Tony’s parents died, he had been seventeen years old, and thought himself invincible. 

Their  car accident , which everyone knew was anything but, had sent Tony in a fit of rage that paved the road for the life he leads now: Howard had never meant for him to take over the family business — he was supposed to be their way  out of it — but under Obadiah’s tutelage, and with anger as his fuel for those first few months, he made a name for himself in their circles,  The Merchant of Death .

Obadiah’s betrayal shouldn’t have shocked him as much as it did — as he grows older and looks back on his past, he can see all the ways Obadiah fed his hatred, quite possibly on the hope that Tony would finally meet an opponent who could take him down, but it hadn’t happened — not even Obadiah himself.

As he created a perfect weapon, his godfather and mentor hadn’t realized that he would, one day, be aimed at him.

When the whole deal with Obie was over and done, Tony saw himself in a position he never thought he’d have — head of the Stark Family, up to his neck in the mob world his father had tried to keep from him. By now, he is too dirty and too guilty, too much blood on his hands and cash in his pockets for him to deny to be what he is, and he doesn’t try to — not anymore.

Not since Rogers joined in.

X

At first, Tony disliked Steve on principle — he was a friend of his father’s, younger but tougher, and a stickler for rules. How Steve had kept in touch with Howard when he became a cop, Tony still doesn’t know and doesn’t intend to ask. Rogers had been, at one point, a good cop. He did his duty, and he believed in the law — and then, his best friend had been killed, and no one ever persecuted the people accused of doing it because of a dirty deal. In the underground world, everyone knew who had done it,but the police turned a blind eye, and justice was left for another day.

Steve Rogers came to Howard a few months after quitting, and hadn’t left since. For a while, Tony actually feared his father would replace him for Steve, but it wasn’t so, in the end. When Howard died, and Obie betrayed him, Steve became his right hand man, and they became tentative friends first, and close friends later on.

Tony now knows that Steve holds many regrets in his heart from his time as a cop, but none are bigger than Bucky’s death. He blames himself for it, and has said more than once, he would do  anything to get his best friend back.

Steve is so honest, and earnest, and aching to do good, that Tony isn’t even surprised that things work out in the way they do.

X

When they find the man, he is trying to kill Steve — it’s only because he hesitates for a moment, that they manage to get a hit on him, and bring him in for questioning.

What not a single one of them expected was to find James Barnes behind the Hydra mask.

Hydra, the one pain in Tony’s neck that would never, ever leave. The one Family Steve held a grudge against, and the single one all the other families in their city refused to work with — Hydra was lawless, and had no sense of duty or honor to anyone but their leaders, and even among them there’s squabble and betrayal aplenty. 

They find out James doesn’t have his memories, any of them. They call in their most trusted doctor, who hazards a guess that Hydra had been shocking Bucky into forgetting things, and that he should be able to recover his memories if left alone.

Tony gives him space after that, and leaves the man in the capable hands of the doctors their dirty money can more than afford, and Steve, who looks like a new man now that he has his best friend back.

“Are you going to leave now?” Tony asks late one night, as they are going over books.

“Not if he can stay,” Steve replies, and Tony nods.

Two birds in the hand is worth one in the bush, right?

X

James stays, and Tony avoids him.

Deep down, he knows  why he is avoiding him, and he keeps waiting for the second the man is going to come and confront him. It takes less than a month.

Bucky without being crazed by the torture Hydra put him through, and away from the insane environment that kept him from recovering his memories, is a handsome man. He looks a little like a caged animal, but there is something soft in his eyes, in the careful way he moves, that reminds Tony of a predator playing at being prey. 

“I killed your parents.”

It’s the first time he hears the man’s voice since the day they brought him in, and there is the same softness in his tone as there is in his eyes. He speaks as if he’s waiting for Tony to just kill him, be done with him, and maybe spare him the pain of living.

“I thought you might have,” Tony answers, eyes never wavering, because he hasn’t yet met a confrontation he doesn’t take head on, “Do you even remember them?”

The other man’s eyes flare for a second — anger and fear and  ire —  but it goes back to regret and sorrow with a blink.

“I remember all of them,” comes the quiet reply, and Tony barely dares to breathe, “I didn’t remember who they were.”

Tony nods at him, and he can feel something inside him go a bit softer, a bit less angry with that declaration.

“What do you want to do about it?”

Bucky looks at him, eyes shining again with intensity, the hunter coming through from behind the scared animal facade. 

“I want to take them all down.”

Tony nods.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

X

In between hunting Hydra informants, and attacking all their main money making endeavors, Tony finds himself lost in James. It’s his eyes, at first. Then it’s the way he runs his tongue over his lips when he has to speak up. The way he moves with a gun in his hand, the ferocity in his eyes when he sees a target — the way that ferocity starts to turn into softness and fondness when he looks at Tony.

He never planned on having a family, on having someone to call his own, but one night, when James’s arms are around him, and he can still taste the flavor of his skin in his tongue, the touch of his fingers on his skin, he finds that this,  this , he doesn’t mind. 

It’s not a family like his father always said he needed to have — a woman and a child and a respectability that was all for show, and none of the warmth a family should have — but it was  his . It was knowing Bucky had his back, that he had found in this man, this strange man with the broken past and more monsters behind his doors than anyone Tony knew, the peace he had always craved.

Bucky was always honest, and always open — to him. In his own way, with few words and many gestures, Tony felt secure in knowing that this was the one person he would never have to bribe or pay or fear.

Buck had already admitted to killing his mother, and his father, and made clear that his priority in life was to take Hydra down.

One night, when they are laying in bed, their breathing the only sound in the room, Bucky looks at him in the eyes, serious and solemn.

“That is not my number one priority,” he starts, his hand coming up to brush a strand of hair from Tony’s face, “Not anymore.”

Tony frowns at him.

“Then what is?”

“To keep you safe.”

It’s a promise, a statement and a fact — it is what Bucky will try to do, to the end of the line, and Tony has no doubts: what reason would the man who confessed to killing his parents have to lie to him now?

He closes his eyes, a faint smile on his lips.

He found home.

He hopes Bucky found home too.

 

 

 


End file.
